As home sales slide, foreclosure rates rise and big lenders go bankrupt, it's hard to think of the glass being half-full, rather than half-empty, when it comes to real estate these days.
Unless, that is, you live in Salt Lake City. Or Binghamton, N.Y., Salem, Ore., or Allentown, Pa. In these U.S. metropolitan areas, and in 93 others, existing-single-family-home prices actually increased in the second quarter of 2007 from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. The national median home price, meanwhile, fell 1.5%, to $223,800, in the same period.
Despite the national decline, there are some bright spots out there, according to the NAR. "Although home prices are relatively flat, more metro areas are showing price gains with general improvement since bottoming out in the fourth quarter of 2006," NAR senior economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. "Recent mortgage disruptions will hold back sales temporarily, but the fundamental momentum clearly suggests stabilizing price trends in many local markets."
Compared with the 97 metro areas that saw price gains in the second quarter of 2007, 83 markets had increases in the first quarter of 2007, and 68 areas were up in the last quarter of 2006.
Buoyant prices in Utah's capital
What's keeping the market afloat in Salt Lake City? The median home price in the metro area was $233,100 in the second quarter, up 21.9% from a year ago (the biggest price gain among the 149 markets covered in the survey), according to the NAR. Not bad, especially compared with, say, Elmira, N.Y., where the median home price dropped nearly 18% in the same period, to $71,700.
"We really didn't participate in the housing boom a few years back, so when things slowed down around the country, that's when we started picking up," said Jim Bringhurst, president of the Utah Association of Realtors. "We're not a market that's extremely volatile."
The 2002 Winter Olympics put Salt Lake City on the map and drew money and new development to the area. Bringhurst said the city's strong and well-diversified economy has contributed to the recent wave of healthy real-estate growth. Online retailer Overstock.com and energy company Questar are headquartered in the area.
Salt Lake City also is known as a peaceful, clean place to live -- both literally and morally, with its heavy Mormon influence. According to Bringhurst, many newcomers from California have purchased homes in the area over the past few years in search of a better quality of life than is affordable elsewhere.
"My next-door neighbors moved from Southern California," said Bringhurst. "They were tired of the traffic and the craziness of it all, and they were able to come here and buy a really nice home and improve their quality."
Healthiest housing markets
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